Amanda Knox Jurors: No Planning or Malice in Killing

[SoDesuKa]

Source: CNN

Rome, Italy (CNN) -- Jurors believed American Amanda Knox played a role in the slaying of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, but thought the death came about without any premeditation or animosity, according to a report released Thursday.

The 427-page report, written by Judge Giancarlo Massei and Assistant Judge Beatrice Cristiani, explains the reasons behind jurors' determination in December that Knox was guilty in the November 2007 stabbing death of exchange student Kercher while the two roomed together in Perugia, Italy.

The report blames "random contingencies" and "the combination of various factors" for Kercher's death.

"It is a crime that happened ... without any planning, without any animosity or rancorous feeling against the victim that in some way could be seen a preparation and predisposition to the crime," it said.


Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/03/04/amanda.knox.jurors/index.html?hpt=T1

---

The jurors have backed away from the prosecutor's lurid fantasies about what happened. This is a welcome development.

[Left Coast2020]

1. That prosecutor has some serious mental problems.

And he apparently was being investigated for some maleficence or improper conduct in his duties on other cases. They should release her on that alone.

[sabrina 1]

3. There were several prosecutors in the case. The trial was fair

and the evidence against her was pretty convincing. I agree with this conclusion by the jury. I don't think anyone ever said the crime was pre-meditated anyhow during the trial. But I do believe she was there and participated in what resulted in the death of Meredith, her room-mate. She told far too many lies and changed her story several times. She was never able to answer the question of where she was that night and her claim that she was at her boyfriend's apartment was not corroborated by him.

It's a sad case, most definitely for the family of Meredith who will never see her again and she was, according to all who knew a really beautiful person in every way.

[JI7]

4. imagine if the innoncent man she accused did not have an alibi

he might be in prison and she would probably be out doing cartwheels and laughing at him.

[maxsolomon]

8. ahh, here we go again

with DU's foremost apologist for the italian justice system.

"she told far too many lies and changed her story several times" is not in itself EVIDENCE of guilt. she was questioned for 40 hours in a language she did not speak. she was a scared kid. her "cartwheels" were YOGA poses that she did to reduce stress - in Seattle, we do that sort of thing. what stress? the stress of coming home from your boyfriends and finding your roommate brutally murdered. the kind of stress that adds up to false accusations under coercive police interrogation over 40 hours.

the physical evidence at the murder scene is entirely consistent with a single killer, that being Rudy Guede, who fled the country. the physical evidence against rafaello & amanda is circumstantial - they LIVED with the murder victim - of course their DNA is jumbled up.

meredith's beauty has zip to do with amanda knox's guilt. it's no longer merely a 'sad case', its a travesty of justice that is being compounded by robbing 2 kids of their lives. it's sad for the solecittos and the knoxes, as their children are trapped in jail for crimes they had nothing to do with due to overzealous prosecutors, incompetent investigation, corrupt judges, and tabloid hysteria.

[JI7]

12. so you think Scott Peterson should go free based on guilt from circumstantial evidence ?

[devilgrrl]

22. I'm sorry but your beloved Amanda is a murdering sociopath and the Italians made the right decision!

:hi:

[pnwmom]

31. And you are as ignorant as all those who thought the Duke students were guilty, too.

No logical, reasonable person -- uninfluenced by all the publicity during the year of the trial -- could come to the conclusion she was guilty. It's not possible to violently kill someone and leave not a trace of physical evidence in a crime scene that has clearly not been cleaned up -- because it was FULL of physical evidence. Just not a bit from Amanda.

[sabrina 1]

24. I'm sorry, I don't know you and I'm certain you don't me.

I comment on many topics and most definitely have commented on the wild assertions about a country's judicial system which were completely wrong. If it upsets you that people will not just allow lies to be told without some kind of response, that's your problem.

DNA together with the blood of the victim found at the scene of the crime is not what you normally find no matter whether they were roommates or not. I think the jury found that a little odd as did most other observers.

As for her being questioned for 40 hours, she herself says it was 14 hours and even that has not been established. If she is innocent, maybe she remembers by now where she was on the night of the crime. That would probably be a big help, or how her DNA came to be mixed with the blood of the victim in several different places in the apartment.

Considering the evidence absent any credible explanation from her, and she was given ample opportunity to establish an alibi as were the other friends and roommates of Meredith, who actually were able to do so, I agree with the jury's verdict.

[pnwmom]

32. Her DNA was found in the toilet of the bathroom they shared. So was

Meredith's blood. So what? Of course you're going to find Amanda's DNA in her own bathroom! And it wouldn't be surprising to find it in other places of her apartment, either. Every time you shed a skin cell, you're shedding some DNA. Do you think these girls were vacuuming every hour? The critical issue is that none of her DNA, blood, footprints or fingerprints were found in Meredith's bedroom, the crime scene. And it would be physically impossible to remove all of that while leaving all the evidence (blood, DNA, fingerprints and footprints) of the real killer, Guede.

She does remember where she was on the night of the crime -- in her BF's apartment.

[devilgrrl]

14. And Amanda Knox is a textbook sociopath - I hope she enjoys jail time for the next 20+ years.

eom

[pnwmom]

33. Why? Because she denies doing the crime she didn't do? n/t

[alp227]

2. And...the evidence against Knox is pretty weak too.

Yep, not only has the motive dissolved, other issues with the trial included possible police coercion and mishandled crime scene evidence.

[sabrina 1]

5. The evidence against her was actually very strong which is why

she was convicted. Having read some of the evidence against her, mostly her own testimony regarding her activities that night, her inability to say where she was and her ever-changing stories, not to mention her own statements, written when she was alone, not in the presence of the police, in which she falsely accused an innocent man for the second time and claimed she witnessed the crime, it is hardly in doubt that she participated in the crime. She laughed when asked if she owed that man, whose life and business she destroyed, an apology.

I don't have any doubt that she was involved in the crime. I can't say what exact role she played, but at the very least it was clear that she was there from the evidence.

[pjt7]

6. she's guilty on some level

no denying that.

[maxsolomon]

9. there is denying that

if she's innocent of the crime she's accused of, there is no other "level" to be guilty on.

[pnwmom]

37. Yeah, right, like the Duke students were guilty "on some level."

:sarcasm:

(Just being a good looking college student seems to be enough reason for some people to find a person "guilty as charged.")

Explain how, if she's guilty, then she was able to knife Meredith to death, without ending up with any of Meredith's DNA, blood, hair, etc., on her person -- and without leaving a trace of her own blood, hair, DNA, footprints, handprints, in the room where Meredith was murdered. And the idea that she cleaned up the evidence is laughable -- for one thing, this idea is based on a news report and was never introduced into the trial as evidence. For another, it would be physically impossible to remove all traces of her presence in the room while LEAVING much evidence of Guede's presence.

[maxsolomon]

11. you should doubt

your entire list of reasons supporting her involvement is her coerced testimony and police-suggested accusation of her boss, a black man (and a black man was eventually convicted of the crime) - the only eyewitness account they had of a suspect.

her laughter at the suggestion of an apology may have been many things, but again, it is not evidence of murder. her life is also 'destroyed' by being falsely accused of this crime. when will the Perugian courts apologize? after the state department pays the bribe?

[sabrina 1]

13. Her testimony was not cooerced. That is HER assertion

but she has lied about so many other things most people do not believe that story.

Also, as I already pointed out, even if we were to believe that the police influenced her, they did not influence her, nor has she herself claimed they did, when she voluntarily wrote the accusation again when she was nowhere near the police.

I'm not sure what you're saying about the 'black man'. She NAMED her employer, it was not a case of mistaken identity.

There was enough forensic evidence also, even throwing out the evidence that was questionable, which the jury did not need. They focused on the solid forensic evidence that pretty much makes it a certainty that she was there that night.

She was not falsely accused. She was, like everyone else who was close to Meredith asked to come to speak to the police after the murder. Of all those who complied with that request, as she did, she was the only one whose answers to questions regarding where she was that night, kept changing. She made herself a prime suspect. She was considered to be only a witness until she implicated herself.

Please, the picture being painted of this woman by the PR team hired by her family does not gel with the actual evidence of what kind of person she is.

True, her laughter at the idea that she should apologize for ruining a man's life and business doesn't make her a murderer, or doing cartwheels right after hearing that her roommate was brutally murdered, but it does show a very different picture of the person being painted as some kind of angel from heaven by her PR team.

It shows her to be callous and unconcerned about others. Very different from the reaction of the rest of Meredith's friends and roommates whose reactions were what would be expected of people who just got the news they got. And before you respond that doesn't make her a murderer either, we know that. What got her convicted was some very solid forensic evidence and her inability to stick to one story as to her whereabouts that night.

[devilgrrl]

17. She kept changing her story too

eom

[LisaM]

20. I live in Seattle and I have to say

I don't know anyone who does yoga poses that look like cartwheels when they're stressed.

[devilgrrl]

21. Especially after your roommate is found slaughtered in the apartment they shared.

I mean wtf?

She's a nutjob

[LisaM]

25. I have my doubts about Amanda Knox

it was big news here, though.

[pnwmom]

39. How about this one?

[devilgrrl]

15. Boo hoo - She's a punk. Bet she loves all of her fan mail though.

eom

[pnwmom]

30. She should get 26 years in prison for being a punk?

She can't have committed the crime they accused her of -- wielding a knife that helped to kill the victim -- because there wasn't a scintilla of physical evidence putting her at the murder scene. No footprints, handprints, hair, fiber, DNA -- not anything. Even though the crime scene was full of evidence (footprints, handprints, DNA, blood) left by the actual killer. Some brainless people think it's possible to clean all evidence of Meredith from the scene while leaving tons from Guede. But it's not.

(The DNA of hers that they found was only in the bathroom that she shared with her roommate, so that was no surprise. And there was too small an amount of DNA on the clean knife that was pulled out of the boyfriend's kitchen -- not the girls' kitchen -- to say who it belonged to, or to repeat the test.)

[Darth_Kitten]

7. She's guilty..............

They convicted her.

[maxsolomon]

10. and as we know

juries never convict the innocent, and never free the guilty.

[devilgrrl]

16. They convicted her because she was involved - the little narcissist

:nuke:

[JI7]

18. narcissism runs in the whole family

i get disgusted listening to the disgusting family tell lies . and yes, they know they are telling lies.

[devilgrrl]

19. I know they're lying too - they're filth!

Hiring a PR firm. If their precious daughter was so innocent then why didn't they hire the best lawyers?

[regnaD kciN]

27. "They" also convicted Peter Reilly...

...so, I guess that means he was still guilty, too? :crazy:

[devilgrrl]

28. And Scott Peterson!

:wow:

[MicaelS]

23. I doubt very seriously..

If we would still be discussing this case, except that Knox is a young, pretty, white, American female. So, because of all that many people in the US across the political spectrum believe she's a "victim" of foreign "justice".

[Darth_Kitten]

26. Probably not.....

:)

[pnwmom]

38. I think those same factors are why many DUers automatically assume she's guilty.

Just like they did of the Duke students who were falsely accused of rape.

[Flaneur]

29. I have a hard time believing Knox and boyfriend are really guilty.

It just doesn't make much sense, especially when you have that other guy already convicted for her assault and death.

They just "randomly" decided to do a little rape and murder thing while fucked up on hash?

I wager both of them walk free at some point before too long.

[pnwmom]

34. And there is no physical evidence that Amanda was in the crime scene.

You can't violently murder someone and have absolutely no exchange of DNA, blood, hair, etc. And yet the room was covered in footprints, handprints, blood and DNA -- but it all belonged to Guede and Meredith.

The only item that had DNA from the BF was on a bra clasp. That bra was kicked around on Meredith's floor for 47 days before it was collected for evidence, making it useless as evidence. But not in Perugia, where the jurors appear to have no common sense.

[sabrina 1]

35. With that statement you make it clear you have either not read

the evidence or you prefer to deny it. There were four places in the apartment where Knox's DNA and Meredith's blood were mixed. That is incontrovertible evidence of her presence at the crime scene after or during the time that Meredith was murdered. The jury believes and so do I that Amanda Knox played a role in a murder that was not pre-meditated, but in a situation that got out of hand due to several factors, one of them being drugs which both Knox and her boyfriend admit they were doing that night.

She was there, the forensic evidence proves that. Not to mention that she herself said she was there. And then, there was their efforts to clean the apartment. She would be better to admit her role in the crime as in Italy, when someone does that, they generally get a reduced sentence. It would also be easier to live with herself and stop the charade and trying to remember all the lies she told. She is very lucky this happened in Italy and not here in the U.S. She would probably be facing the death penalty and there would certainly not be any compassion for her from the jury, as there was in Italy.

[pnwmom]

36. The whole apartment wasn't the murder scene -- only Meredith's bedroom.

Name ONE piece of physical evidence that connected Amanda to Meredith's bedroom. Then explain to me how their supposed effort to clean -- which was NOT a part of ANY admitted evidence -- could possibly have removed all traces of Meredith from the murder scene -- Meredith's bedroom -- while leaving intact Guedes's footprints, DNA, etc. (The fact that you mention the supposed cleaning shows that you -- like some of the jurors, no doubt -- allowed yourself to be influenced by reports in the media that were never introduced into evidence in court.)

Anything found in the rest of the apartment can be explained by the fact that Meredith WAS in the apartment BEFORE and AFTER Amanda died because she LIVED THERE.

Get some common sense. Please.